


Taking Root, Leafing Out

by aegistheia



Category: Mononoke-hime | Princess Mononoke
Genre: Character Study, Coming of Age, Gen, Philosophy, Post-Canon, Wilderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28107816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aegistheia/pseuds/aegistheia
Summary: San navigates her world as it rebuilds, and finds herself walking in parallel with people altogether unexpected, and some not quite wanted either.“You have not yet had to make the kind of choices like I have,” Eboshi says, unafraid, firm as the mountain rocks, and oddly gentle, “but you lead, do you not?  One day, you will know.”
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Taking Root, Leafing Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meradorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meradorm/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, meradorm! I hope you enjoy this as much as I did writing it.

As Ashitaka slips out of view, San breathes in deep, and exhales.

The death of a great god is potent indeed; the smell of decay and blooming life is still rich enough to fill even her dull nose with its cloying sweetness, strong enough to cover the acrid smell of black powder. She resists the urge to sneeze, again, and starts another grim patrol through the forest. Though the bodies will return to the earth soon enough, the lake of the Forest Spirit is sacred; she would not tolerate its waters be sullied by corruption.

She and her pack do not stop until the fading crescent of the moon rises high enough to breach the treetops. They retreat then to wash themselves of ash and smoke; the pyres will burn themselves out come morning. Once in their den, as is their custom, her siblings curl around her when she is settled and her pelts draped to her satisfaction. Customary too is their banter. It is a balm and a cat’s tongue tonight, soothing and ruthless both, for they only know truth, and truth is not kind. “San, sister mine,” says her brother eventually, “you do not go with He Who Hates Not?”

“I do not belong in human towns, Yoru.”

“He would have made a fine packmate, were he not human,” says her sister, meditative. “He is fangless and short of legs, but his claws bite deep, and his aim flies true.”

“Ashitaka has too many questions,” San grumbles, burying down harder into her sister’s scruff. “He is an adequate human, Saki, but I have no use for humans now.”

Her siblings huff, and jostle each other, and cease prattling minutes before their breaths grow long and relaxed, as too is their custom. Less customary, though, is the fading scent of their mother. It is not the same, without the her occasional but distinctly comforting warmth, and it will never be the same again.

She finds herself staring into the dark sky, sleepless, until it swallow her whole between one blink and the next.

\-----

In her dreams, San walks often with Mother.

Tonight, it is an old memory, and a favourite. A god has many duties, after all, and cannot always dedicate themselves to childrearing. Yet, Mother had deigned to walk with her that evening, pacing her great strides to match San’s little feet. San remembers knowing, and feeling grateful.

“—so what are you, Mother?”

“I am a wolf, and a god.”

“From where did you come?”

“I am of this forest.”

“Like all the animals?”

“Yes. And no. Some forget.”

“Forget?”

“They do not remember whence they came.”

“Oh. Like who?”

“Humans.”

San clambers over a fallen log, and laughs as Mother leaps clear over it in a great sailing streak of white. “Do they know that?”

“I don’t know. They act as though they believe that they know.”

“That they are human?”

“Perhaps.”

They pause again, Mother waiting as she climbed the low boughs of a patient tree to join its multitude of dancing _kodama_. “But how do you know yourself if you do not know where you come from?”

“You do not,” says Mother. “Humans departed the forests long ago and have forgotten their roots. They lack insight into their very selves, and with it, foresight.”

“Then it is good that I am not human,” she declares. Her mother laughs, a quiet exhalation of air.

“No,” says Mother, “you are not human anymore, curious child of mine.”

\-----

San wakes with dried salt streaked on her face, and the abrupt realization that Mother’s laugh then was, in fact, a sigh.

\-----

They are a third day into cleaning the forests when Saki comes sprinting. “Burning Black Powder and Blood is coming,” she snaps, canines gleaming.

So that was why the woods had been so restless since sunrise. San drops her bough of wood to leap upon her sister, and they run.

Eboshi proceeds to search for her as all humans do: clumsily, crushing tender shoots and delicate leaves underfoot, and with the sort of daring that brings her straight to the shores of the sacred lake. “ _Mononoke-hime_! I know you’re here. Come give me a moment.”

As if her graceless crashing through the foliage hadn’t already announced her presence mere steps into the forest. She nudges Saki forward from the shadows, drops down from her back on the largest stones and frowns down at Eboshi. “You’re loud,” she tells her, then adds, “and stinky.” The woman is lucky that she hadn’t been attacked thrice over, given the way that her herb-bitter blood-scent is bleeding across the clearing.

“Water can’t be spared for baths right now. The healers waste enough dressing my wounds as it is.” Eboshi leans to put her back against a great tree, then sliding down to sit against its roots with a faint wince. Beside her, an overly inquisitive _kodama_ clicks its little head at her and waves. She returns it a raised eyebrow. “We have too much to do for spending such resources on me.”

“Then why are you here, looking for me?”

“Because I need to speak with you.”

Her skin prickles; this close to the island, even with the Forest Spirit gone, her soul recognizes its late presence. “I do not want to speak with you.”

“In that case, thank you for coming,” Eboshi says sardonically. “There are many important things that we must do. But you are important too. I want to entreaty with the gods of this forest.”

San tenses, halfway to unsheathing her bone knife in pure reactionary defence. “Why?”

“Because I promised my people to build a new town. A better town.” The fool woman stares her down with no fear at all, despite missing an arm, her weapons, and most of her balance. “Killing the gods didn’t work. So, we shall try working together.”

Her sister growls, a low sounds that shakes the bones.

San scowls harder. “Humans have no place to bargain with the gods.”

Eboshi’s eyes narrow. “On the contrary. We have shown that we can kill gods. And yet we have all lost much with that venture, no? It shall be in their better interests, too.”

“The pride of this woman, to presume to know the interests of gods!” Saki howls, edged beyond endurance.

San bares her teeth. “You’ve done enough damage to this forest. The gods don’t trust you. Leave.”

“I understand that it is hard to believe that people’s intentions can change. But mine have, and in a show of faith, I have come alone and unarmed. I will wait for their presence to honour me.”

“Humans do not learn,” she hisses, stalking forward. “Leave! You are not welcome here any longer.”

“You have not yet had to make the kind of choices like I have,” Eboshi says, unafraid, firm as the mountain rocks, and oddly gentle, “but you lead, do you not? One day, you will know.”

She stands and turns then, and leaves the same way she came. She does not look back.

\-----

Ashitaka proves to be as adept a promise-keeper as he is a promise-maker.

“You make it sound as I seek you out more frequently than I actually do,” he remarks, amused, when she tells him so.

“It’s only been a week, and you’ve come by twice since. So you do seek me out frequently,” she sniffs, handing him a piece of jerky and receiving a hot cup of leaf water that he calls ‘tea’. Today, they are out of sight of the wreckage of that infernal town; though they are close enough for her to smell its stench, the surrounding greenery does much to improve the ambiance. “How goes work?”

“Boring,” Yakkul whines. San smiles, petting him gently on the neck as he lips at her shoulder briefly, breath smelling of crushed grass. “He doesn’t run with me in the metal village.”

“Rebuilding such a complex town is interesting,” he smiles, leaning back against the moss-covered rocks, beside two kodama lounging in the same position as him. “Lots of adaptation and problem-solving.”

Eboshi’s people seem more prone to illness and disability than the regular forest folks, but Ashitaka had hushed her the first time she’d voiced it. “She took in the sick and the weak when they had no one else,” he’d said, and though it had been delivered without reproach, she’d still felt a queer flush rise upon her cheeks. “And she gave them a safe space to live and the opportunity to work. It may not be how the wolves run, but it is how she keeps this town.”

“We do not throw out the weak in our pack.”

“But that is not how all wolf packs work, no? It is not the typical human way, either.” His smile had twisted at that. “But it is how the Lady wishes to change the human way.”

“I wonder how you could live amongst them,” she says now. Yoru huffs, and she turns to frown at him; he’d promised to stay out of earshot if he were to shadow her meetings with Ashitaka. “I hate them all, every single one.”

“Hating humans wholesale seem very difficult to me,” he says, slow and pensive. “Are you not human?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“My mother raised me to be a wolf.”

Ashitaka nods, acceptance in every line of his body. San relaxes a tension she hadn’t realized was there until it left. “Do you remember the _tatarigami_ that carried you into the Deer God’s pond?”

“The one who was once Okkoto-nushi. Yes.”

“How do you think he became so?”

“He was injured by humans with their cursed iron, and hated them.”

“Yes. I was cursed by a _tatarigami_ , and felt his hate infect my soul. I don’t believe that it was the iron that transformed him. Otherwise your mother would have become like him too.” He leans back, then thumps down onto the stirring grass. “No, I think it was the hate.”

She regards him closely. “You seem certain.”

”I know hate. The hate of a god had driven me from my homeland, after all.” Ashitaka refills their cups; the fragrant smell wafts pleasingly around them. “But I learned to work with it in time.”

“They do not all behave like you.”

“So it is the way that the humans of this town behave that anger you.”

“Yes.”

“Then these humans can be taught too, right? If they learned, as you have.”

“If you care to spend the time and energy to change their minds.” She stands on the rock and stares him down. “How do you explain in words the light of the full moon as it dapples through the forest and guides you home in the dark? How do you teach the respect that the gods and spirits are due? You do not. You must do it, and feel it, and live it, again and again until you know it in your bones.” Until the silver of the moon is an indelible part of the breath, until the press of the _mononoke_ sits gentle and unobtrusive upon the skin, until the wildness of the untamed forest is entwined through the very soul.

Ashitaka is silent for a long moment. ”But they can start and try. That is how you learned at first too, no? That you took the first step.”

“You have too much faith in them.”

“He has faith in you,” Yakkul points out mid-munch of greens. San ignores him.

Ashitaka smiles up at the sky above them. The blue is so intense today that it stabs at the eyes. “The last words that my village’s matriarch gave me was that we cannot change our fate, but we could rise to meet it. I do not think the people of the forge is destined to live here in peace and prosperity while the gods still live, but neither do I think the gods will be left alone here while the townspeople stay.” The wind whispers between them, threading through the grass. “And Eboshi-gozen has come to you. Is this not fate, descending? One day, we may even recognize it.”

San presses her lips closed around her cup of tea. _A better town_ , Eboshi had said.

A better town, but for whom?

Ashitaka has too many questions. San suspects that he is becoming a bad influence on her, but she cannot bring herself to mind all that much. She is now, after all, curious.

\-----

The apes did not escape the forest spirit’s transformation unscathed. Their new leader now heads a shrewdness that had shrunken by one quarter. When they pass by at sunset carrying seedlings for their unceasing work, San slips from Saki’s back and waits. Though some hiss at her and curl back their lips, they number few, and soon enough the group stops altogether and parts to allow her passage into their midst, to where their chief sits.

“Heiyou-dono,” San greets, bowing, “my condolences for your loss.”

Heiyou inclines her head with the same sagacious grace as the fragrant woods around them. “The gods give, and the gods take. We will find balance soon enough. We are sorry for your loss as well, daughter of Moro.”

She has to swallow past the sudden lump in her throat. “Thank you for your consideration. But my mother was a guardian of this forest; she lived long, and died well.”

“Be that as it may, you may grieve her and her choices, child.”

San frowns. “Our paths move ever onwards. We have work to do to honour her.”

“We are made with eyes facing forwards, and necks that can turn the head so that we can look behind us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will, one day.”

 _One day._ San is fast growing tired of that phrase.

Heiyou rumbles low in her throat; a chuckle. “You look dissatisfied, little one.”

“I want to understand now,” San says.

The old ape sighs like the west wind. “This is why you are more human than wolf,” she says, “you are young. Too young.”

“I am old enough to know what is right, and to fight for that.”

“You are curious. That is the way of the young.” Little apes and three boar piglets run a ring around them, chattering and screeching, throwing seeds and pebbles in a chaotic game of catch until an adult reprimands them with a snap of their teeth. “Like these babies here. They get into everything. The water, the trees, the dens of creatures that would finish eating them before they realize that they’ve died.”

One ape child makes a protesting sound, mid-search for the seeds he’d scattered, and is promptly chastened back into concentrating on his task. His boar brother nudges him in commiseration.

San rather agrees with the young ape. “It is not bad to be curious.”

“No. Curiosity is what brings the possibility of change, for better or worse.” Heiyou fingers a leaf of the seedling tucked under her arm. The moon picks out the silver in her fur with exquisite detail; San knows that she is not as old as Mother, but she is wily enough to become so one day. “And change is coming. Our old ways are coming to an end,” she states, so painfully uninflected that it has to be deliberate, “and though we must fight to protect what is right, we cannot fight this. Change is inevitable.”

“Yes.” Change is the way of the forests, after all. Even the wills of the strongest gods cannot change _that_. “But humans do not do what is right.”

“Some do. More can. We will have to watch them and stop them from going too far. But we have fought enough.”

“I can fight for us,” San promises.

“As the young would fight,” Heiyou grunts, and gestures for San to move.

San complies; after all, they have an important mission, and the night will not wait.

\-----

Eboshi comes again seven days after she’d first sought San out in the aftermath, this time with her glowering guard in tow. San turns her away as before, with vocal support of her brother, whom followed with his hackles half-raised the entire journey here.

“Too young,” Eboshi says with a shake of her head. She is less pale today, but the bitter-herb scent is stronger than ever, and her balance remains largely absent. “The wolves truly have subsumed your soul.”

“We stole nothing,” Yoru snarls. “Humans threw San away first.”

“The world is changing around you,” Eboshi continues, in clear ignorance of her brother’s speech, “and your gods are dying. They don’t have to die.”

 _Change is inevitable_ , Heiyou had said. And gallingly enough, Eboshi has the right of it, too; their old approach has been for naught. San takes a deep breath to quell the fire within. “You don’t know whence you came,” she says, slow and deliberate and as kindly as she can copy from Ashitaka, “so how can you claim to know anything about yourself, much less the gods of the land upon which you have settled?”

“Such disrespect to Eboshi- _gozen_!” snaps the burly man, who fancies himself dangerous enough to protect the creature beside him. Yoru swings his snout to him, entire body bristling.

Eboshi stops him in his tracks with one gesture. “Gonza, peace.” She fixes San with a stare of bone. “Many have pasts they would rather forget. That is not my story to tell, but theirs.” Her unflinching gaze swings out into the shadows dappling between the trees." It doesn’t matter, though. I know that human lives are beautiful and valuable. I do not need to know whence anyone came to know what direction I must take. And that direction leads me here, to speak with the gods instead of killing them.”

Pretty words. But gods and spirits do not rely on mere words alone. “Prove it.”

Eboshi gestures. The man’s face twists as though he’d bitten into something rotten, but he obeys, laying down a burden of neatly wrapped cloth, then stepping back in clear invitation.

Yoru bares his teeth at the bundle. San glares at them for good measure, before nudging forward to unwrap it. She leaps back when she sees the gleam of metal and wood. “What is this? You said you were unarmed!”

“It is yours, if you will have it.” Eboshi makes to cross her arm, then winces and rests it against her hip instead. “This is what allows the women to protect themselves, and what we use to fight.”

“This doesn’t belong here. Take it away!”

“The gun is just a tool. But it’s a powerful one, and one we will use to defend our own.” Eboshi leans forward. “If the gods were willing to work with us, we would defend them with this too.”

“The gods do not need you.”

“Not now. But I tell you this: I am not the only one who wishes to make use of this forest’s riches. The local lord may have had his forces vanquished, but the emperor has more, and they will come sooner rather than later. And they may be less inclined to learn the lessons you have taught us before they burn these forests down.”

“Threats from humans will not be looked upon kindly,” San growls. Yoru’s backing growl ups in volume and gains an edge.

“It is not a threat. It is a future of many that may happen. I am trying to point out that this does not have to happen.”

San kicks the gun up, and spins it to level the sharper end at Eboshi. “What makes you think I won’t use it to kill you?”

The man swells like a mating bullfrog, face purpling, but Eboshi just smiles. “You could have killed me in many other ways, and you can easier than ever now. But will that accomplish what you want? The town won’t go away just because I die. The women can defend themselves, and they have a long memory.”

The weapon is a cold weight in her hands, unnaturally smoothed wood and sleek metal sitting strangely with her balance. And yet, it sings with her, in strange, distilled harmony with the woods; for it came of the forest themselves, every part and component, and it recognizes home.

“Think on it,” Eboshi says, “and keep the gun. It is yours. I will come back.”

\-----

Her pack laughs when she relays them Heiyou's and Eboshi’s matching sentiments about her age. “Sister mine,” says Yoru, grinning, “do not protest overmuch! The apes are right; how young you indeed are! How young the humans have always been!”

“I am not young,” San says, insulted, “I am a wolf.”

Her brother laughs as Saki howls. “Humans,” she yips, “are amongst the youngest in the forest. They left too long ago, and return as mere babes. It just so happens that these babes now have fire and iron, and conduct themselves as pups. One cannot trust pups unsupervised.”

“Embrace it now, San,” says Yoru, “for soon enough you will grow out of it, and you cannot gain it back.”

“Brother, I am a _wolf_.” Wolves are ageless.

Yoru licks her face as Saki scents her. But San can feel the truth of it: they accept, and reject at the same time.

Ashitaka had smelled so strongly of hate, the first time he’d grabbed her, hand; and yet every single action he’d taken during those desperate days had been anything but hateful. And he’d conducted himself much like her siblings now: with acceptance, and rejection too of that hate. That he was cursed, but above it; that he was rising to meet his fate face to face.

And she—

Altogether too furious to breathe, San breaks away from them and runs.

The lay of the land is shrouded in the dark as she leaps through the leaves, but this is her pack’s territory. This is not the first time she has gone running in the dark; that first time, she’d snuck out and tried it just to see if she could, just because she was _curious_ —

She snarls into the crisp air and runs, and runs, and runs.

\-----

The air is biting into her lungs when she crests the highest hill of the range. She leaps towards the sentinel tree and climbs. The bark is ice-cold and rough against her hands, and the ice-lined branches whip at her naked skin beneath her furs and leathers. Were it a warmer winter, there would be an angry squirrel or two to fight her off of their stash of winter nuts as well.

Still, it was a small price to pay, as she breaks through the canopy. The silver river of stars arc above, glittering. The moon is hiding behind the clouds, but the high winds are strong tonight; soon enough, he will show his face and bless them with his silver light. A little _kodama_ a few branches below tilts its little head at her, then clicks the opposite direction in greeting. She nods briefly, then looks outwards.

The shapes and dynamics of the cedar has changed throughout the seasons, but the sky has been the same relentless constant as ever since her very first memories, when her mother had taught her to climb and recognize the spice within the green scents under a brilliant moon.

How must this all look to the stars? How frantic they must seem, scurrying below as the colours of the lands cycles through reds and yellows and greens and browns and bare patches of white, then fills in again? As animals live and die within mere flickers of their light? How young must they all seem, to be scrabbling for their place in this world. Willing to play, to fight, to pick up the mess, to wonder.

San thinks of Eboshi, telling her, _one day_. But she does know, has always known. Maybe that just means she’d made her choice early and never looked back.

Inadvertently, she thinks of Heiyou shaking her head, saying, _Eyes forward_ , _and necks to turn and look back_.

She thinks of her mother, sighing, _you are not human anymore._

She thinks of herself, declaring, _I am a wolf._

No. She is more.

\-----

Her pack noses at her when she comes back lightly crisped with frost. “San is feeling better?” her sister inquires sleepily. Of course they feel safe; San is patrolling in a temper, in their minds. They know better than to follow her.

“Yes.” There is nothing quite like seeing the wide spread of viridian to calm her spirit, and nothing like the song of the wind through the leaves to coax her heart to sing in tandem. The scent of the forest and the _mononoke_ is pressed into her skin, until who she is cannot be divided from where she is.

And yet, the odd distillations of humans seem to belong. Even the graven iron of the gun shines in odd symmetry from where she’d placed it on the island in the sacred lake of the forest god, and the wood like a river-shined pebble. It is already the favoured playground of many an interested _kodama_. Though it lacks the scorched powder smell of activation, she is certain that Eboshi will take pleasure to show her how to use it and have it acquire the nose-burning stench, if she asks.

“I know what I am not. just don’t know who I _am_ right now,” she admits into Yoru’s fur.

Saki yawns. “The humans call you our princess. Will you take upon that?”

“Why should I care what they call me?”

“You could ask them why,” Saki rasps, already half asleep, “you’re important enough to us, princess or no. Whatever a princess is...”

Yes, humans rejected her first. Perhaps it is time for her to ask them why herself, and see if they can bear to stare at what they had done in the face and justify it.

Who knew? Maybe she has use for humans now after all.

\-----

Too soon, and oddly not soon enough, Ashitaka comes to her again three days later. She descends, glad of heart, but slows down when she catches the scent of two others: another red elk, smelling of salt, and another person, also smelling of animal and musty hay and iron.

Yakkul whickers a greeting when she nears them, but is altogether too consumed with grooming another red elk to pay much attention to her. So too is Ashitaka occupied, turned to face the stranger in their usual meeting spot.

The stranger is just as sharp as Ashitaka; the girl turns well before she steps into the clearing, staring her down with the same fire in her eyes as his. Ah, Ashitaka’s pack has come for him.

“San,” Ashitaka greets, “this is Kaya, my little sister. Kaya, this is San.”

“Hello,” San says to Kaya, who stares back, eyes a little wider than before, before she starts and bows. Bemused, San nods.

“Kaya followed rumours and tracked me down just today. How well-loved by the gods you are,” Ashitaka laughs.

“Not as much as they love you, Brother.” Kaya flicks a glance at her neck. “You gave her my jewelled dagger,” she observes.

“It is a good dagger,” San offers. She hadn’t used it much, but it had cut into Ashitaka neatly enough when she stabbed him. That cut had barely scarred, too, thought that may be the work of the Forest Spirit.

“Thank you,” Kaya says primly.

Ashitaka smiles at her, then at Kaya. “She has not left my side since she arrived this morning, but it's a hard journey here from our lands. It must have been important, why you came.”

“I came to see you,” Kaya says, mouth in a firm line, “to bring news back to our people, and to pay respects, if... if I found where you rested.”

“I do not need any more respect than that which you don’t give me,” Ashitaka teases, smiling, and laughs outright when Kaya hits him on his shoulder. As he fends her off, still laughing, she catches him by his scarred hand and turns it over.

“I’m glad,” she says, quietly, and his laughter fades. He draws her into a tight embrace that she returns with a sniff.

“So am I,” he agrees, voice full of aching affection. “Our people are in good hands if they have appointed you into my old station. You must tell me more about how our people are faring, and how your journey was coming here.”

Kaya beams at her brother, and Ashitaka smiles back. Like this, they both look as though years have fallen off their shoulder.

Perhaps that is the secret to seeing with eyes unclouded.

San’s skin prickles again, as though she is in the presence of a god yet undescended. San is already turning towards the sacred lake before she catches herself.

“Ashitaka, bring Eboshi the next time you come to visit. I cannot promise that the gods will hear her, but I will listen to what she has to say on the humans' behalf.” And perhaps some gods will, too.

Ashitaka blinks at her, mouth a little open, expression wondrous. It is Kaya, of the same brave blood that runs through Ashitaka’s veins, who speaks instead. “‘You will listen’?”

San raises her head high. “They call me _Mononoke-hime_.”

Kaya tilts her head, clearly puzzled. And San understands; she shares much of the same sentiment. She doesn’t quite know what this entails either, or where it will lead her. But it is enough for her to take root, stand her ground, and from this draw strength and rise to meet what this may mean. She is enough.

And one day, she will know.

_-fin-_


End file.
